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There were numerous reports of PayPal withholding funds for unknown reasons and ruining people and businesses. Did these dent the trust? Seems not at all.

• close04 6y ago
  I'm not sure if this is a matter of trust or lack of choice in this case. There simply aren't too many options to achieve the same results as with PayPal. Every site I go to gives me several payment options but the only ones present across every one are PayPal and card payment. So if that's what the buyer uses, the seller doesn't get much of a choice either.
  • A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
    This. Based on the offerings I saw, Paypal is noticably cheaper than other options for basic small business use case ( minor ebay shop, small online store ). The charges are straighforward and easy to predict. Compare that to most other providers and you find yourself digging through reams for legalese with fees calculations that are ridiculously complex and, seemingly, designed to deceive. I am not a big fan of Paypal and heavens know it has some major issues to address, but the entire field kinda sucks in its own unique way.
    • cptaj 6y ago
      I think the biggest issue with the entire field is not respecting the users. They're treated as potential criminals, their livelihoods and money are not respected at all, they have no recourse to protest administrative action, etc. Its a terrible experience overall. It has gotten better but still leaves a lot to be desired
      • PeterisP 6y ago
        Just like there's no way around the fact that a large portion of email is spam, there's no way around the fact that in the field of receiving money on internet, a substantial niche of potential users actually are criminals. Their volume of transactions is quite large, they are sophisticated and eager to try out new services, and they can rapidly direct the flow of (many) fraudulent payments to a new payment service provider or scale the exploitation of some cash-out system to thousands of accounts managed dozens of actual people (generally 'money mules' who get scammed themselves). So if your service is friendly to that group of customers, no matter if accidentally through some process flaw or intentionally (because you're not treating criminals creating accounts as potential criminals), then you can (and will) suddenly get a lot of criminal activity. For a small service, as soon as organized criminals notice that your policies allow them to use you for making fraudulent transactions, they can quickly bring in much more transactions that any of your marketing activities. The general result of doing what you propose is that it works until criminals notice a particular vulnerability in your processes/policies caused by excessive trust in users, and then suddenly you get a LOT of fraudulent activity which makes all your operations unviable. I've seen small merchants get a tenfold increase in transactions over a single week, with all of that increase being fraud, enabled by some weakness that is massively exploited until they close the weakness. Or close their business - for a small business, a single major fraud campaign can easily be enough to bankrupt them.
• StupidPeople 6y ago
  As a buyer none of that is my problem. PayPal sucks for sellers, but because buyers want it, it is used.
  • watermelon0 6y ago
    The main reason for PayPal success is that credit card providers don't offer secure one-time payments, and a way to cancel recurring payments. Nobody really wants to give out details of their credit card (except maybe in the US) to random sites, and there is no alternative to PayPal.
    • hakfoo 6y ago
      Your time horizon is too short. PayPal succeeded because they rode the eBay wave. Millions of people hit the site in its "online garage sale" phase, PayPal had three or four things that went for them: * As a seller, you could provide an experience less terrible than mailing a postal order with a basically instant and free onboarding process (compared with a real gateway) * As a buyer, it was typically easier and faster than postal orders, and they developed a reputation of being pushovers for fraud, which was important when dealing with "garage sale" tier merchants. * They were very aggressive with signup bonuses to acquire market share. $5 for new account + $5 for referral. * A lot of handwaving about the eventual revenue model. I recall wne it was "we'll survive on the float of customer balances, nobody will ever pay a credit card fee" and then a series of market shocks where they changed course-- all of which took place long after they had a critical market base. This got them a major market presence-- to the point where I can recall Citibank being curbstomped with a similar product (c2it) despite even richer recruitment bonuses. Eventually, they merged and sailed under eBay's flag and it was the default payment method there until quite recently. This created an :installed base" nobody else could compete with. They then pushed their marketing towards "you don't have to give the merchant a card number" playing off security fears, but I suspect major secondary factors are "it's basically LastPass for payment methids" convenience (from before browsers offered to save card info) and that some people keep a PayPal balance as an "off the family books" way of financing their hobbies and such without the wife seeing your purchases on the statement.
• wdb 6y ago
  PayPal is a company that illegally holds your money hostage. I am already trying for more than a year to get few thousands back fro them but it's impossible. You can't get any human on the phone there and they keep asking for more information per email. Any company that only offers payment via PayPal is a lost sale. One of the reasons why I don't use Gumtree or eBay anymore
• himinlomax 6y ago
  That sucks for vendors and is quite unfair, but it's quite reassuring for users. I know I'd rather use Paypal for vendors I don't trust if I can.